Soldiers stories

Military veterans gather to tell truth about Iraq, Afghanistan wars

Untitled Document
Veteran Mike Mlekowski’s disillusionment with
the Iraq War didn’t begin when he set foot on Iraqi sand in 2003,
during the initial invasion. It started after the government called off the
search for weapons of mass destruction. From that point on, he says, a question kept
“eating away” at him: “If we’re not looking for
weapons of mass destruction, then why are my brothers and sisters
dying?” Mlekowski, a member of the central-Illinois chapter
of Iraq Veterans Against the War, was one of several anti-war activists who
gathered Friday evening at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
to watch a live feed of “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan”
in Washington, D.C. The “Winter Soldier” event, designed to
give veterans an opportunity to talk about their experiences in the
nation’s wars, was similar to an influential gathering 37 years ago
of military veterans who protested the Vietnam War. Like their Vietnam War predecessors who spoke of
American atrocities in a losing effort, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans gave
poignant eyewitness accounts, including descriptions of how U.S. soldiers
fired indiscriminately at civilians. “The main objective is to just educate people
and bring the war home, more or less,” Mlekowski says, “let
them know that things aren’t maybe going as nicely as you might see
on CNN and Fox News.”Other Illinois members of the IVAW — including
Martin Smith, Nathan Peld, Tanya Austin, and Jason Wallace — traveled
to Washington to participate in Winter Soldier. One of the people who attended the event at the U of
I was Jeremy Polacek, a member of Campus Antiwar Network. “I could have very well watched this by myself
at my computer, but I wanted to come out and be a visible member of the
community,” Polacek says. Mlekowski and IVAW chapter president Paul McGuire
hosted the session, during which audience members watched “Aims of
the Global War on Terror: The Political, Legal, and Economic Context of
Iraq and Afghanistan.” This panel discussion, which featured Amy
Goodman, host of Democracy Now!; Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq:
the Logic of Withdrawal; and Michael
Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New
York-Stonybrook, was followed by a question-and-answer session with the
hosts. “I think a lot of people have this
misinterpretation of the war, because it’s not really being
broadcast,” Mlekowski says. “Your hear the body count every day — you
hear about it, but you don’t really hear about what’s really
going on.”Contact Marissa Monson at mmonson@illinoistimes.com.